After his stylistic fumbling with the interesting fantasy material of The Cars That Ate Paris, Peter Weir seems to be on surer ground with Picnic at Hanging Rock—a pure 'atmosphere' piece, with all manner of submerged dreads and longings collecting thickly in the air of a Victorian summer. The consummate and consistent lushness of the film in this respect, however, could be seen as a kind of displacement; the uncertainty in the style of Cars has become the subject of Picnic, and what one might identify as the Weir method—working round his subject, following various tangents but never quite clinching the heart of the matter—finds its perfect complement here, not only in the unsolved mystery at the centre of the plot, but in the repressions and evasions of the Victorian setting…. The trouble with the film begins in the early stages with its tendency to...